By Dr Paul Jepson and Dr Richard J. Ladle.  Oxford University Centre for the Environment

One way to improve the performance of conservation is to identify different policy approaches and to evaluate the likely effectiveness of plausible options in the target socio-political setting. Such evaluation is important because environmental governance is currently transforming to embrace a more complex interplay of actors, mechanisms and instruments. Consequently, as conservationists we should be both questioning the efficacy of normative state-led, ‘command and control’ regulatory approaches, and evaluating the potential of so-called hybrid governance approaches which are characterised by a greater involvement of non-state actors and the use of market-based, voluntary, eco-labelling and other ‘new’ policy instruments.  This is the goal of our Darwin project titled “A market led conservation response to the domestic bird trade in Indonesia” which is focusing on the massive demand for wild-caught birds generated by the hugely popular Indonesian pastime of songbird-keeping. Here we present a summary of some preliminary findings which we are preparing for submission to various conservation journals.

We adopted a mixed methodology approach involving a major questionnaire survey in the six largest cities of Java and Bali, an in-depth interview survey, and a social network analysis of the bird keeper fraternity. The questionnaire survey of over 2000 households, conducted with the help of our partners AC Nielsen and Burung (formerly) BirdLife Indonesia, found that 1-in-3 households surveyed keep a bird and nearly 2-in-3 urban households have kept a bird some time in the last 10 years. Our projections suggest that just over 1 million wild-caught song birds are currently kept in the six cities, and this figure includes (median) projections over 150,000 Orange-headed Ground Thrushes and 100,000 White-rumped Shama.  The former species was rare in our 1999 survey (Jepson & Ladle 2005) and in-depth interviews confirmed a rise in popularity of keeping native songbirds such as thrushes with exceptional vocal repertoires (mostly forest species), and that this trade may be driving rolling local extinctions of these species in forest blocks across Indonesia.

Available in PDF downloadable (342 kb).

• Developing New Policy Instruments.pdf